A federal appeals panel has sliced almost in half nearly $5 million in attorney fees awarded by a federal judge to a group of lawyers who led a decade-long legal action against Sears and Whirlpool over allegedly defective washing machines the retailer sold.

A federal judge has denied class certification to Whirlpool customers who said the company sold them defective, overheating ovens, saying their expert witness couldn’t help them establish that all of their oven problems arose from the same source.

A celebrity chef has asked a federal court to turn down the heat brought by a competing restaurant group cooking up a legal storm over whether they can legally stake a trademark claim to “the kitchen.” Wolfgang Puck Worldwide Inc. filed a complaint Feb. 24 in Chicago in hopes of preventing The Kitchen Café LLC from asserting protectable trademark rights over the term “The Kitchen.”

A federal judge has signed off on a plan to award more than $4.8 million to attorneys who led a decade-long legal action against Sears and Whirlpool over allegedly defective washing machines the retailer sold.

A Chicago lawyer and the son of a prominent Ft. Wayne, Ind., banking executive has sued a financial advisory firm he claims bungled the division of a trust established to manage the assets of his late father, saying the firm should be made to pay for allowing the trust to miss out on a bull market, costing the trust at least $2 million in potentially lost investment returns.

A council of more than 30 Chicago-area hospitals has sued its IT provider over the tech firm’s plan to destroy patient data from its servers, saying the action would severely impair the council’s ability to operate a patient-data sharing exchange.

On the heels of announcing it had resumed covering patients seeking health care through University of Chicago Medicine, Land of Lincoln Health has asked a Cook County judge to dismiss a class action lawsuit brought by two of its former customers who alleged the provider of Obamacare health insurance policies had misled people into buying policies under false premises.

More than 10,000 people who paid to fix problems with certain kinds of Kenmore and Whirlpool washing machines sold by Sears could be in line for some money in coming months, as a Chicago federal judge approved a settlement agreement to end nearly a decade of litigation over the reliability of those home appliances.

The legal fight over the fate of the Park Grill restaurant in Chicago’s Millennium Park will continue in the courts in 2016 and perhaps beyond, as the city of Chicago and the restaurant’s operators each prepare for appeals and counter-appeals of a Cook County judge’s decisions in a case over an allegedly crooked restaurant deal that has already cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and court costs.

A Cook County man’s lawsuit, which alleges the Ashley Madison adultery website not only failed to protect personal information from hackers, but also two-timed male members through fake female profiles, could be headed from circuit court to Chicago federal court. In September, Matthew Lisuzzo filed a 10-count putative class-action suit in Cook County Circuit Court against Avid Life Media Inc., and the company’s law firm, Barnes & Thornburg.

While Chicago city officials sued the owners of the Park Grill restaurant to collect millions of dollars in taxes and fees that would otherwise have been paid into the city’s coffers, the years-long litigation which failed to persuade a judge the deal was too crooked has cost the city’s taxpayers millions in legal fees, as well. In September, Cook County Judge Moshe Jacobius shot down the lawsuit brought by Chicago City Hall to undo a deal cut by the Chicago Park District with a group of invest

A suburban Chicago village facing hundreds of lawsuits over allegations it knowingly allowed its residents to drink water contaminated with toxic, cancer-causing chemicals for decades has opted to move forward with a potential bond issue to potentially settle the litigation en masse later this year.